Baioken Eishun - 'Courtesan in a Procession'

Baiōken Eishun ( ja, 梅翁軒永春; active ) was a Japanese painter and print artist of the Kaigetsudō school of ''

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

'' art. He is also alternatively known as Hasegawa Eishun , Baiōken Nagaharu, Takeda HarunobuMorse, Anne Nishimura et al. ''Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850''. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2007. p80. and a number of other

art-name An art name (pseudonym or pen name), also known by its native names ''hào'' (in Mandarin), ''gō'' (in Japanese), ''ho'' (in Korean), and ''tên hiệu'' (in Vietnamese), is a professional name used by East Asian artists, poets and writers. Th ...

s. He produced both

hanging scroll A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. The hanging scroll was displayed in a room for appreciation; it is to be distinguished from the handscroll, which was narrower and ...

full-color paintings typical of the Kaigetsudō style and mode, and a number of designs for illustrations for

woodblock printed Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

books. Richard Lane describes Eishun's work as very similar to that of

Matsuno Chikanobu Matsuno Chikanobu (, fl. 1720s) was a Japanese painter of the Kaigetsudō school of ukiyo-e art. Believed to be one of the most popular painters of his time, his work, very much in the Kaigetsudō style, consists largely of ' (pictures of ...

, though the

courtesan Courtesan, in modern usage, is a euphemism for a "kept" mistress (lover), mistress or prostitute, particularly one with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients. The term historically referred to a courtier, a person who attended the Royal cour ...

s in his ''

bijinga is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women () in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre. Definition defines as a picture that simply "emphasizes the beauty of women", and the ''Shincho Encyclopedia of W ...

'' (paintings of beauties) are somewhat taller, slimmer, and more serious-looking. Eishun, along with Chikanobu, represents something of a revival of the Kaigetsudō school which fell into decline in the preceding decades following the exile of its founder,

Kaigetsudō Ando Kaigetsudō Ando (壊月堂安度, ), also known as Ando Yasunori, was a Japanese painter and the founder of the Kaigetsudō school of ukiyo-e art. Though influential and prolific, it is probable that many of the works attributed to him were pa ...

, in 1714.

Notes

References

* Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796
* Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). "Baiōken Nagaharu," ''Japan Encyclopedia.'' Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...

.
OCLC 48943301
Eishun {{Japan-painter-stub